Plot and character are deftly interlinked in the story [The Dark Canoe] told by Nathan Clegg, sixteen, who had sailed with his brothers Jeremy and Caleb from Nantucket to find a sunken ship, the Amy Foster, at Magdalena Bay in Baja California. Jeremy, Nathan's idol, has mysteriously disappeared while Caleb, after the discovery of the underwater location of the Amy Foster, has, in a diver's outfit, been probing the wreck…. The skill of the author is revealed in his masterly treatment of a contrapuntal theme suggested by [Herman] Melville's Moby Dick. The "dark canoe" that Nathan discovers afloat is Queequeg's coffin, which had rescued Ishmael from destruction. On his sixteenth birthday Nathan receives a copy of Moby Dick from Caleb, who limps like Captain Ahab because of a childhood injury to one of his legs. Caleb also can quote much of the book from memory. And at the...